Aiming at the difficult problems of trigger delay, jitter and short life of triggered vacuum switch, A new type of triggered vacuum switch based on a gas-breathing electrode was designed to carry out life test and conduction characteristic experiment under different trigger polarity, main gap voltage and trigger energy. The experimental results show that compared with the pure metal electrode switch, the gas-breathing electrode switch has shorter trigger delay, shorter jitter and longer working life. The trigger delay and jitter of negative polarity trigger are lower than that of positive polarity trigger. The trigger delay of positive polarity trigger is 1.7-3.0 μs, and the delay jitter is 300-700 ns. The trigger delay of negative polarity trigger is 400-600 ns, and the jitter is 30-70 ns. The trigger delay and jitter decrease with the increase of trigger energy, but when the energy is higher than a certain value, the influence of trigger energy on the conduction characteristics tends to be saturated.